Understanding Our Church
A Treasury of Arkansas Writers Discussing the Catholic Faith
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Catholic Diocese of Little Rock
Immerse yourself in silence of prayer
Published: February 3, 2024
By Edward C. Dodge
Catholic High School for Boys
When we were kids, my mom served homemade pizza and Buffalo wings every Wednesday night, and my brother and I had to finish what was on our plates before we could take another slice or wing.
So, naturally, we’d eat the slices as quickly as possible, and without fail, my dad would admonish us: “You’re inhaling your food! Did you even taste it?”
Perhaps, however, now, the aftermath of the holiday season can provide us with the opportunity to slow down, to quiet down and to be still with God. Even Jesus, after all, climbed mountains to find a slow, silent place for prayer with his Father.
Man, what a great metaphor for life in general and perhaps for our prayer lives in particular. This hit me particularly hard one day when I realized that I wasn’t really praying the Divine Office: I was skimming through the psalms, just as I’d skim through a newspaper article. Was I actually trying to pray, I wondered, or was I just checking a box?
The busy-ness of life incites us to speed up, to be “efficient” with our time, to complete the current project so that we can start on the next one. Our phones ping and ding and buzz us, constantly diverting our attention from the project at hand. And, unfortunately, those distractions pull us, too, from cultivating relationships with each other and with God.
So, I’ve been thinking about silence lately, and as God is wont to do, he threw some things at me. I’ve been re-reading C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” and in one chapter, Screwtape laments to his nephew that the poet was not wrong when he described heaven as “the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence ... . Music and silence — how I detest them both!”
The music of hell, after all, is noise — noise which prevents us from asking ourselves the questions that really matter, from examining ourselves, from rest and from contemplating God’s face.
St. Teresa of Kolkata once offered Dan Rather a glimpse into her daily prayer routine: she would sit in front of the tabernacle, not speaking, but listening. The journalist asked what God said to her. “Nothing,” the saint responded; “He just listens.”
And while Elijah didn’t hear God in the cyclone, when he heard the whisper, he covered his face. Samuel, too, heard God call quietly during the night. So I see Screwtape’s point: if we are too busy, if our lives have too much noise, we might just miss God’s voice when he calls.
On silence, the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church are quite poetic: “Words in (contemplative) prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the ‘outer’ man, the Father speaks to us in his incarnate Word, who suffered, died and rose; in this silence, the spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.”
And silence, too, has its role in the Mass, as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his wonderful “Spirit of the Liturgy:” “We respond, by singing and praying, to the God who addresses us, but the greater mystery, surpassing all words, summons us to silence … a silence with content. ... We should expect the liturgy to give us a positive sillness that will restore us.”
Not a task to be completed, but a rest to experience in our Lord.
The Church’s calendar provides us excellent opportunities to cultivate silence in our lives with Advent and Lent, but the former is past and the latter remains weeks away. Perhaps, however, now, the aftermath of the holiday season can provide us with the opportunity to slow down, to quiet down and to be still with God. Even Jesus, after all, climbed mountains to find a slow, silent place for prayer with his Father.
